Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Here is a continuation of the aforementioned translation:

Preamble

To render homage to Louis Boyer by accompanying his thought with that of Joseph Ratzinger, today Benedict XVI, is immediately to emphasize to what degree the eminent French theologian was, by his encyclopedic culture, in symbiosis with diverse thinkers, certain of whom were German, and above all how he would carry out with the future Pope, in troubled periods in the Church, the very creation of Communio.

Cardinal Ratzinger justly emphasized this fact in one of his conferences in 2002, before the Eucharistic Congress of Bénévent. Recalling the origin of Communio, he cites the names of Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, and Jorge Medina. And he continues by emphasizing that the Church is not first of all a concilium, but koinonia, not simply horizontal but first of all vertical since the communio roots itself in the first place in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.

But how can we aspire to a veritable communion, with God and with others, if the liturgy is no longer understood as “the traditional expression of the Christian mystery in all its plenitude, as gushing fountain?” Louis Bouyer, zealous for the edification of the communio, contests that the instrument has disappeared or has been singularly disfigured: “It is necessary to say it without ambiguity: there is at this actual hour practically no longer anything of the liturgy in the Church worthy of the name. The liturgy now is scarcely more than a decomposed cadaver.” In his first magisterial work, which followed his conversion to Catholicism, he had warned: “We guard therefore against the temptation to substitute for the living liturgy an archaeological reconstruction. But we try to find, in the historical sources of our present liturgy, the inspiration which would permit us the burning atmosphere of its life to our times. Then the immalleable pleats of its hieratic robe would find their ancient suppleness, and the stiff characteristics of its impassible mask would find themselves in the light of a divine source.” This divine delight promised by a liturgy respectful of the sacred is the sign that what is at play is the very relation of love between God and man. The abandonment of the living tradition does not precipitate communion, it precipitates on the contrary its greater impossibility. Certain men of the Church, following in the train of the world, have dangerously replaced living continuity by that which changes, by chaotic movement, by the direction of the wind, abandoning all reference to the past, in what proceeds from Revelation. Believers are the tributaries of the cult which has preceded them, which they receive as a heritage of life. “The liturgy, which is the life of prayer and of adoration of a unique community: the Mystical Body of Christ, which progresses across history to partake of a unique source, the teaching and salvific action of our Savior, always active in us graced by the Holy Spirit,” wrote Louis Bouyer.